[lbo-talk] Query on Ellen Schrecker

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Feb 1 18:54:54 PST 2012


Ellen Schrecker, author of the NYT piece on "Fading Dream" (recently referenced here) is identified as having written the following books: Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (1998) and No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (1986).

Has anyone read either or both of these books? If so, can you tell me to what extent the boks reflect the unfortunate narrowness of focus indicated by the titles?

Here's the problem. We live in a period of much heavier repression in the universitiesd than was the case during the Great Red Hunt. Moreover, McCarthy hardly merits the "ism" always added to his name. The Red Hunt had become a major element in U.S. life for a number of years before McCarthy (finding opposition to colored margarine an insufficient campaign device) leaped aboard with this famous lists of x number of reds in the state department. And note: Almost all his concern was with Reds in government, and he probably did far less damage on university campuses than did HUAC. And finally, the Red Hunt continued with unabated ferocity after McCarthy's fall. If you have never seen it, you might check to see if _Operation Abolition_ (1960) is available. It was made by HUAC to warn the public about the unsavory characters who were agitating for the abolition of HUAC. It focuses on HUAC hearings in San Francisco (I for get the date) and the disorder witnesses created within the hearings and the riot occurring on the steps outside the building in which they were held. In 1960 many school districts & colleges still included a loyalty oath in their contracts.

If the Red Hunt is to be named after anyone, it should probably be Atchrson-Dulles, or perhaps merely Trumanism. (McCarthy was not the only opportunist to jump on the band wagon for his own purposes, merely the most famous.)

So. Does Schrecker write about the whole period of serious repression (roughly 1946-1960+), or do her books carry out the focus of the title.

I am trying to make sense of her article, "Fading Dreams," and her merely nominal references to the social & political context of today's university are disturbing. She names all those elements but then blithely in her concluding paragraphs concludes that some "we" should do this, that, and the other thing to save our universities, without so much as a phrase exhibiting awareness of the almost impossible task she so blithely says we should carry out.

If the universities were "no ivory tower" during the Red Hunt, why does she not take more seriously all the indications, which she lists, that they are even less of an ivory tower today. And by taking seriously, I don't mean shaking the head sadly; I mean facing the fact that those factors make wholly utopian, foolishly so, the "remedies" she proposes.

Carrol



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list